Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), Facebook Inc (FB): Top New Buys of Billionaire Jim Simons’ RenTech

The newly initiated stake in Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP) is comprised of nearly 1.95 million shares valued at $210.92 million. The holding represented 0.45% of the fund’s portfolio value. Although up by about 7.85% over the past year, Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP)’s stock has slid by 14.3% year-to-date. After a slow first quarter, things still don’t seem to be improving for the $89.56 billion railroad company, according to its weekly carload report. Freight shipped in cars was down by 11% for Week 18 as compared to the same week last year. Among the prominent stockholders of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP) are Jean-Marie Eveillard and Cliff Asness.

Jim Simons’ new bet in the online travel business Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN) represented 0.34% of his fund’s portfolio value. A total of 135,199 shares valued at $157.40 million were acquired during the first quarter. Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN)’s stock has increased by a modest 4.37% year-to-date. Shares have lost some ground owing to a rather soft future guidance provided by the company’s management, despite an earnings beat in the first quarter. David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management held about 316,900 shares of Priceline Group Inc (NASDAQ:PCLN) at the end of 2014.

As far as the importance of tracking hedge funds is concerned, we discovered through our research that a portfolio of the 15 most popular small-cap picks of hedge funds beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by nearly a percentage point per month between 1999 and 2012. On the other hand the most popular large-cap picks of hedge funds under-performed the same index by seven basis points per month during the same period. In forward tests since August 2012, through March 2015 the top 15 small-cap stocks beat the market by a hefty 79.4 percentage points (read the details here). Hence a retail investor needs to isolate himself from the herd of investors chasing large-cap stocks and take advantage of the prevalent arbitrage opportunities in the market by concentrating on these money-making small-cap stocks.

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